Field of Invention
This invention relates to shaft alignment devices and in particular, to static shaft alignment devices directed to axially aligning a first shaft with a second shaft.
The shaft alignment devices as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,115,925 and my pending application U.S. Ser. No. 6/430,333, filed September 30, 1982, disclose shaft alignment sensing structures as fixedly mounted to a shaft mount support. Although this arrangement is suitable in situations where the two shafts to be aligned are of the same diameter, the general situation encountered is two shafts having different diameters. To compensate for the difference in shaft diameters, U.S. Pat. No. 4,115,925 discloses one approach utilizing spacers on one shaft mount support, which spacers are equivalent in thickness to the difference between the radii of the two shafts. The spacers are used on the shaft mount support mounted on the smaller diameter shaft. This approach has problems. First, the operator of the shaft alignment device must first measure the diameters of the two shafts and make a calculation to determine the difference in the shaft radii to establish the correct spacer to us. Second, a substantial range of spacers must be available to accommodate the large range of radii differences encountered. Third, the spacers can be difficult to place on the shaft mount support when the radii difference is very small.